


with the disobedience of eve

by apotheosizing



Category: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Genre: (it's quite mild but it is there), 19th Century-Typical Use of Far Too Many Commas, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Canon Compliant, Gen, POV First Person, Period-Typical Internalized Misogyny, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:40:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26045152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apotheosizing/pseuds/apotheosizing
Summary: The woman Robert Walton found half-frozen on the icy tundra recounts the beginning of her tale.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19
Collections: Rule 63 Exchange 2020





	with the disobedience of eve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wolf_of_Lilacs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/gifts).



> I've always thought the Victor-as-Prometheus was such an interesting part of the story and so here's my spin on that with Victor-as-Eve, instead. I also tried a bit of style emulation with my writing here, hence the million commas. I hope you enjoy it!

Of my father's children, I was the eldest, and though I was not the heir of his estate, I learned under his instruction the languages and arts. My school-companions were both Clerval and Elizabeth, who each took to the lofty fancies of artists and poets with passion, while I spent many nights in the library, with the words of the philosophers as my only companions. This addition to my intended curriculum resulted in many sleepless nights, such that my youth is often known to me through fog like a dream half-recalled on waking.

It was on the shelves of an inn in Thonon, with the inclement weather that so often precipitated the path of my own destruction pounding against the windows of our rooms, that I first found the fatal text. Its worn leather cover was engraved with the words _Theatrum Chemicum_ , and its splendid observations entranced me, though my grasp of Latin was shaky and imperfect at that gentle age. The theories within held my young mind in such a grip that I considered announcing my findings to my father before I regained control of my senses.

Though at the time I did not realize the reasons for the division of what myself and my cousin were taught in comparison to the breadth of subjects in which Clerval was instructed, I sensed he would disapprove of the study of such matters, as he had not seen fit to indicate their existence to me. I spoke instead to Elizabeth of the wondrous ideas that I then found as enchanting as the tales of romance for which my dear friend Clerval was so praised by our parents, and while she did not share the heights of my enthusiasm, she did not dissuade me from my own excitement.

From then on, I sought only to learn more of these theories and their application. In my pursuits, I prevailed upon Clerval and Justine, who was our peer in age but more dear to younger Elizabeth than to myself, for their discretion. They both obliged my unceasing requests for the works of long-dead natural philosophers and, if my father noted the appearance of these tomes by my side during our daily instruction, he did not examine their contents.

Yet I, in my fervent examination, could not help but note the deficiencies in these texts. Many advancements which were commonplace to myself were wholly unsuspected by these thinkers and though the childhood promises of commanding spirits and converting base metals to gold faded with my inability to enact them, these imperfections could not wholly persuade me from my admiration and study. For two years, I became as familiar with Agippa and Albertus Magnus as with any in our domestic circle. Despite the vast different in our circumstances, I considered myself their peer. As I sunk deeper into my obsession, my attention to my intended subjects grew perfunctory; Elizabeth surpassed me in her artistic endeavours and Clerval grew more philosophical than I, but in my secret studies I was as well-versed as they in theirs.

Even then, I dreamed of how I might surpass these ancient writers, for with my modern knowledge I could surely improve upon their faulty systems. Inspiration struck when the heavens shook before my eyes and I saw for the first time the power held by Nature, splitting apart the great stone pine around which Clerval and I had often played. Over her dominion, Nature presided absolute, where she imbued every thing with life and, in kind, with death. This troubled my adolescent mind, and I wondered if such limits might be surpassed as those others of matter might be by the methods of Paracelsus and his like.

By this time, my brother Ernest, six years my junior, reached an age at which he could begin his instruction, and Elizabeth's attention was primarily on establishing his foundation in those principles that would serve him best. Likewise, Clerval was impressed upon to study his father's mercantile trade, and was occupied with that apprenticeship to the exclusion of much else. Deprived of my two principle companions, I attended more strongly to the theories that had taken root in my mind. The sunlit hours I had once spent in the company of my dearest companions were spent huddled in the shade, attempting to produce a miracle of my own.

Alas, my work was interrupted by Elizabeth's illness with scarlet fever and then, more disastrously, my mother's. Alongside Elizabeth, I acted her nursemaid for those brief, terrible weeks, for her condition worsened rapidly until on her death-bed she addressed to us her final words, hoping that I might find my future happiness in the family that I would join to my own. I regret now that I never could fulfil that hope, for I have spent foolishly all the hours of my life on one selfishness after another.

Prior to that dreaded moment, unhappiness had never tread unwelcome across the threshold of my heart. It consumed me so utterly, that I wandered the estate in the grip of a hysteria that broke quite unexpectedly on the day of its fiercest raging; in the graveyard where we attended her funeral, a sudden ardour coalesced in my soul to reverse Nature's hand, to restore life to natural matter. The alchemists of the medieval age had believed extending life to be the most unreachable bound of their art but I! I would see the boundary of life and death to be but a transitory one, to be passed through as I saw fit! Perhaps if I had been entirely dissuaded from the ideas I had first encountered on that rainy night so long ago by proper tutelage, I would not have thought myself their inheritor, and all the pain I brought unthinkingly upon my life could have been avoided, but I was not, and I can only hope to convey to you the gravity of my error in retrospect.

Under the guise of the dutiful daughter visiting her mother's grave, I gathered the necessary components for my task. I did not have an aesthete's eye but my years of painting had afforded me an understanding of the ideal ratios of the human form. Justine kept the secret of my frequent visits to the kitchens to remove the damning dirt from beneath my nails in utter confidence and my father forgave my distant behaviour with the tenderness of one embroiled in the same malaise of loss.

In my education, I had of course been made familiar with the tale of our progenitor. I sought to emulate her virtues and not her failings, in the creation of a new race of beings; where she was ignorant, I thought myself armed with knowledge, and much like my view of myself as the successor to the ancient alchemists, I supposed that I had greater understanding than she of the nature of my trespasses. Oh, how ambitious yet how misguided I was, to take rebellious Eve for my model! I imagine now the disquiet upon my soul in those months as that of curious Eve when first the light of understanding was shone across it, oh so ruinous a torrent!

As I toiled ceaselessly, so too had my father. He had taken my mother's wishes that my future be secured in her absence to heart and sought a suitable engagement for me, that I might recover myself beyond the shadows that fell across the halls of our house, for he presumed by exhausted demeanour to be the work of the unkind spectre of grief rather than my own. I cannot speculate what the tale of my life might have been had I yielded to his benevolent intentions, what joy may have animated my days with vitality, for mere days before I would be consigned to the waiting arms of my fiancé, I completed my work, carried forth by an all-consuming passion that excluded both my reason and my fatigue.

In the ecstasy of my success, I bestowed the vital spark on the corpse I had assembled, and brought to fruition my designs. But, when my eyes, no longer self-deceived, alighted on the horrific countenance of the creature I had created, so like my own and yet so viscerally wretched to the good sense of any human being, I fled, knowing that I had consigned myself to damnation all my remaining days.


End file.
